As U.S. Hails Iraqi Success in Ramadi, Focus Turns to Next Move in ISIS Fight

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration, anxious to showcase a success in the fight against the Islamic State, sent out a flurry of statements and news releases on Monday hailing the Iraqi military’s take-back of Ramadi from the militant Sunni extremist group.

But the accompanying military campaign must now move quickly to capitalize on the success, Defense Department officials said, so the American-led coalition that is fighting the Islamic State does not lose crucial momentum.

That means the Iraqi military must finish clearing pockets of Islamic State resistance out of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, turn it over to a holding force of Sunni tribal fighters and move swiftly to the next stages in the war. Those include pushing Islamic State militants out of the Euphrates River valley and the Tigris River valley north of Baiji; retaking the next Anbar Province city under occupation, Falluja; and finally turning to Mosul, whose liberation is likely to be the last piece of the puzzle to defeating the Sunni militancy, at least in Iraq, defense officials said.

And that, administration officials acknowledge, will take months, if not years.

“Don’t forget, the enemy gets a vote, too,” Col. Steven Warren, the American military’s spokesman in Baghdad, said on Tuesday. “This is all about condition setting. We have to be able to have enough territory under our control to create supply lines, and mutually supporting staging areas, to get into Mosul.”

The key to this plan is cutting off the supply lines in Syria and elsewhere in Iraq to the Islamic State militants who are in Mosul and Falluja. On Monday, buoyed by the success in Ramadi, the American-led coalition that is fighting the Islamic State conducted a number of airstrikes around Mosul and Falluja, destroying tunnel entrances, battle positions and bunkers.

Iraqi security forces, Pentagon officials said, have begun to approach Falluja from three different directions, and are now in what officials called the “isolation” part of the campaign to retake the city. Iraqi forces are trying to encircle the city — “like a boa constrictor” — one official said, and will then move to squeeze out Islamic State fighters, much in the same way they did in Ramadi.

But Falluja is not Ramadi — it is more densely populated. The same goes for Mosul. And Islamic State militants are far more entrenched in Falluja and Mosul, where they have been for much longer, than they were in Ramadi, and that will make it more difficult to root them out, defense officials acknowledged.

Nonetheless, administration officials in Washington hailed the success of the Ramadi operation. Secretary of State John Kerry said in an email that “enemy forces have suffered a major defeat;” Defense Secretary Ashton B. Carter called Ramadi’s liberation “a significant step forward in the campaign to defeat this barbaric group.”

And just in case anyone missed those statements, the White House on Monday night emailed reporters an aggregate of comments from senior administration officials that began with more congratulations and ended with everything else that the administration is doing to combat the Islamic State. (Example: “To date, Operation Inherent Resolve’s partner capacity mission has trained 15,892 Iraqi Security Forces with another 4,200 currently training,” the email offered.)

On Tuesday, the Pentagon provided a list of 10 Islamic State midlevel officials who they said had been killed in airstrikes in December. Two of those killed, defense officials said, had links to the network behind the Paris attacks: Abdul Qader Hakim, who was killed in an airstrike in Mosul on Dec. 26; and Charaffe al-Mouadan, an Islamic State member with links to Abdelhamid Abaaoud, the suspected ringleader of the Nov. 13 attacks in Paris. Mr. Mouadan was actively planning attacks against the West, Pentagon officials said.

Colonel Warren, appearing before reporters in a video call from Baghdad, characterized the killings as “striking at the head of the snake.” But he was quick to caution that there is still a long road ahead.

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Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi of Iraq discussed the liberation of Ramadi on Monday, and he vowed to end the Islamic State’s occupation of Iraqi cities by the end of next year.Published OnDec. 29, 2015CreditImage by Associated Press

Indeed, it took the Iraqi security forces six months to retake Ramadi, after government troops fled the city in May under an Islamic State onslaught. Islamic State fighters used a sandstorm to help seize a critical military advantage in the early hours of their attack on the city; the sandstorm delayed American warplanes and kept them from carrying out airstrikes to help the Iraqi forces.

In July, American and Iraqi officials announced a government offensive to retake Ramadi from Islamic State militants, and American officials said that around 3,000 newly American-trained Iraqi troops, along with 500 trained Sunni tribal fighters, were being deployed to help in the offensive. Iraqi security forces began isolating and cordoning off, but were slowed by hot weather, entrenched Islamic State fighting positions and other factors.

In the interim, 2,500 additional Sunni fighters were trained to help hold Ramadi once it was retaken. But that did not happen until Monday — six months later — when the government center was finally seized by Iraqi forces, who unfurled the Iraqi flag.

The liberation of Ramadi is a “much-needed tactical victory” for the Iraqi government, and one that will erode the territorial integrity of the Islamic State’s area of operation in Iraq, said Landon Shroder, an intelligence analyst for corporations in Iraq.

But, he added, “unfortunately, the battle for Falluja will be just as hard as the fight for Ramadi, given that the Islamic State has maintained a presence in the city since January 2014 and has strengthened their defenses accordingly.”

“Falluja also offers the Islamic State significant tactical advantage in conducting acts of terrorism in Baghdad, which will be used to offset any pressure during the initial assault on the city,” Mr. Shroder said.